How to fix Pod failed to mount hostPath: path does not exist in Kubernetes

What this error means

When a pod tries to mount a hostPath volume, Kubernetes first verifies the path exists on the target node. If the directory or file does not exist, the volume mount fails and the pod cannot start. This is a validation mechanism to prevent pods from failing unexpectedly due to missing paths.

Typical symptoms

• Pod stays in "Pending" state or fails immediately
• Pod events show "HostPathNotFound" error
• Volume mount error: "path does not exist"
• Pod logs show mount or file not found errors
• hostPath volume unmounted or unavailable
• Directory created after pod spec but path still fails
• Directory exists but path is symlink to missing target

Common causes

1. hostPath directory has not been created on node
2. Path is misspelled or has typo
3. Path exists on one node but not the target node
4. Directory was deleted between pod spec creation and scheduling
5. Symlink points to non-existent target
6. Pod scheduled on unexpected node without the path
7. Node ephemeral storage cleaned up (e.g., container runtime cleanup)

How to fix "Pod failed to mount hostPath: path does not exist"

Advanced notes

Related errors

• Failed to connect to server: connection refused (HTTP/2)

  How to fix "HTTP/2 connection refused" error in Kubernetes

  HIGH

• missing request for cpu in container

  How to fix "missing request for cpu in container" in Kubernetes HPA

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• error: invalid configuration

  How to fix "error: invalid configuration" in Kubernetes

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Official resources & further reading

• 📚Kubernetes Official Documentation
• 📖
  Kubernetes API Reference(Official Docs)
• 📖
  Kubernetes Tasks: Run Applications(Official Docs)
• 💬
  Stack Overflow: Kubernetes host path not found(Stack Overflow)
• 🐙
  Kubernetes GitHub Issues(GitHub)